Stuff and Pathfinder

So, once again, the game has been terribly difficult to get together. I got a Pathfinder Adventure Path, a warm-up module, drew a large map for our minis...the whole enchilada.

Then nothing.

We've had a couple of false starts (scheduled something and then it gets pre-empted).

You should never give me time to read up on a subject, though. So, since things were in a holding pattern, I attempted to become more familiar with Pathfinder (a GM should know the game rules, after all) and I kept finding little things that bothered me.

Pathfinder is very complete, with rules for nearly every eventuality. And this is good...sometimes. In my case, it felt restrictive. I know that I can 'house rule' things, but I think that in order to make good custom rules, you have to know the rules you're going to be breaking, and there's just so much to know.

So I started looking around. There are a lot of d20-style games out there, but I wasn't looking for a total departure of the DnD style...just something that fit what I was looking for a little more closely.

Enter 13th Age. Ah...finally, something that has a clear DnD ancestry, but has a lot of freedom. Enough has been said about what 13th Age actually is on the rest of the internet that I'm not going to go into a lengthy explanation, but suffice to say it has some very attractive elements for customizing a game and moulding rules to fit your style without 'violating' the game.

Now I have the core rulebook and the expansion 13 True Ways (oddly, there was no druid in the core book, and that's what Jena is playing). The last remaining hurdle is actually getting together to play.